Frostbite
by HospitallerInaBoat
Summary: An ambush sees Cynder and two allies trapped in a glacial cave network. What starts as an inconvenience turns more sinister when something else stirs beneath the ice... AU (PJ)
1. Chapter 1 - Blood and Ice

_**FOR ONCE, something with no sex**_

_**Don't get used to it**_

_**This just... happened**_

_**Blood, gore, coarse language, heavy emotional shit, you know the drill if you've read my other stuff**_

_**This is a prequel/spinoff of Dragon(s)layer, my other Spyro story**_

_**This is part of my Portaljumper Multiverse series, which means it shares a crossover universe with most of my other Fanfictions, so if you get confused, consult my bio**_

* * *

❄️ **Frostbite **❄️

**1**

* * *

**Blood and Ice**

* * *

**_"The dead don't always sleep."_**

* * *

**(*)**

**_Whisper whisper_**

**_Hide in your lair_**

**_Whisper Whisper_**

**_Cover your eyes_**

**_Whisper whisper_**

**_The madness is wretched_**

**_Whispers not of your own_**

**_The Red One is coming for you_**

**(*)**

**\- Old Hatchling Chant, _The Red Dragon_ **

* * *

She hadn't even seen the fireball coming right at her until it had been too late. This far in, it almost felt stupid to be rewinding the last five hours in her mind, picking apart the reams of knowledge, searching for everything she'd done wrong.

But Cynder couldn't help herself, and not because she felt any sort of self-imposed animosity over it: but because her thirst for vengeance always won out the many battles she mentally fought.

It wasn't her fault that she was literally born vindictive. Logic screamed that at her, as it did about how that Warfangian soldier had not only been defending himself, he had also simply been doing his _job._

Cynder could respect that.

But not the glacier-caves. That ordeal couldn't be reasoned outside of just plain old crap luck. In fact, _everything_ after the tumble was an assorted load of exactly that.

"Crap luck." –And Darkshade had absolutely refused to stop reminding them of it.

"I said you were right the first sixteen times." Reslo sneered in her uneven trot beside him. "Do you not know how to let it go? No, wait, my wing's itching."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Darkshade only sounded mildly offended.

Cynder had long decided that in addition to wishing he had been one of the casualties earlier, he resembled a goat when he was confused. His cyan eyes would widen in this caprine fashion, and his cheek-scales would scrunch, like he was struggling to pick up a phantom smell.

"My wing twitches when wyrms annoy me. What are the odds that out of all the dragons in that Wing, I crashed down here with _you?_" Reslo refused to humor him, turning her long neck away. "I just want you to stop talking. You're going to give us away to any beasties that may or may not live down here."

"I think not." Darkshade snorted, looking around at all the ice. "What could survive?"

Cynder smiled sourly from her place ahead of them.

_Crap luck._

She'd been trapped in a glacier-cave with one of the densest Night Dragons from the entire Dark Continent, and one of the most _angry_. If fate wanted to push the bill just a little further, Reslo would soon go insane and Cynder would break a leg. It was the perfect setup for one of those cannibalism horror stories mountain-folk told about those who never came back from the peaks…

"This is still the same tunnel since the antechamber." Reslo observed with dread, her claws unevenly clicking against the frosted stone of the cave's floor. "We missed a turn behind that intersection, off to the left. I told you both it was there, and you didn't listen to me, now- _agh-_"

"Reslo." Darkshade leaned his black scaled flank into her thinner form, propping her entirely as the Night Dragoness threatened to topple over. "You're bleeding bad."

"Yes, and I am quite certain that she was proactive enough to leave a trail down every circle we made." Cynder smiled over her beautiful crimson wings at them, not pausing for them to catch up. "Maybe we'll lure out whatever calls this hideaway home and catch it before it catches _us._ But my doubts run high, and my patience is exhausted. I suggest the two of you collect yourselves before one or both of you become a hindrance to my movements. And by the way, Reslo, you're wrong about that turn. We've passed that intersection three times and apparently I'm the only one who noticed its limits."

When silence met her, Cynder peaked past her top joint blade and blinked her soulless, pure white eyes at them.

"If you stop walking, you will eventually die." She politely reminded.

Darkshade looked as wooden as ever. Nothing ever elicited frustration out of him it seemed. Here they were, slowly wasting away in an interlocked maze of glacial caves, and the Night Drake was fair-faced: like his peril was a common and daily occurrence.

He looked down at Reslo and saw the fury building in her violet eyes. The lithe dragoness snorted, and her painfully thin muscles contracted all down her flank.

"_Get off._" Reslo snarled, shoving away from Darkshade and swiping at him with one of her wicked, barb-hooked paws. She glared at Cynder's back, before baring her fangs at the drake. "I didn't ask for you to touch me."

"I did not ask for you to fall on me." Darkshade blinked simplistically. "Has the magic done nothing?"

"Why do you care?"

"I care about getting out of here."

"The magic isn't helping because _there is none left!_ Idiot! We have no Mana! Were you there for the battle, or are you too stupid to recall?" Reslo exploded, her sharp voice bouncing down the tunnels like a rapt echo. "Dragons have never lived in the mountains, so the Mana Crystals do not grow here! _Anywhere,_ not even beneath the ice. How are we supposed to use our magic, or our elements, if we have no fuel?"

"It was just my concern showing." He sounded bored, which amused Cynder further down the tunnel. Reslo's eyes flickered over him in the dark, looking for something else to latch onto to help feed her fury. When she was found wanting, she hissed and limped past him, thick droplets of blood pattering into the ice behind her. "What if I offer to carry you?"

"_Pah._"

"Do you think what I say is a jest?"

"I think your stomach, and your loins override anything from the neck up." Reslo's voice cracked as terrible pain stabbed into her eviscerated flesh. "If you want to help me, 'Shade, think about how much _silence_ will ease my splitting headache… Do me a kindness before I meet my end."

"You are not going to meet your end." Darkshade frowned.

"Not another word." She warned, slashing the dagger-blade strapped to her tail. "I say this now."

"You were like this before we took flight. I saw it in your wings. Your scales were clammy and your eyes sunken." Darkshade drew up alongside her, a black shape to go against the deep pink making Reslo's color. "I want to hear what is wrong."

"I thought you only cared about- _ah-_" Reslo whined. Her shoulder was gaping down to her elbow, strips of loose flesh remaining sealed only because she kept a wingtip pressured over the wound. "-_getting out yourself._"

"I do." Darkshade tried to lean into her again, but the Night Dragoness was fed up. She screeched like a hawk, and Darkshade reeled when a wing crashed into his stubby snout. "How can me and the Mistress escape without every claw we have?"

"Get away from me." Reslo sounded manic. "_And don't touch me!_ I can take an inch off your head if you do so again."

"I want-"

"_Hell to your wants._ Darkshade, I cannot take your insistence anymore, even at the gates of death. You leave me be this instant, or I swear I will throw myself on the nearest crag just to spite you."

Darkshade closed his mouth and silently padded beside her. Reslo winced as she dragged her useless forepaw on the ground, her eyes focusing on anything to tear her attention away from the drake.

She limped after Cynder, raising a scaly brow when she saw the black dragon feeling up a glistening wall of ice capping the tunnel ahead. "Mistress? What in the realms are you doing?"

"This wall is thin here." Cynder said studiously, her sharp talons sweeping over the ice with tiny hisses in the still, frozen air. Her eyes- white as the center blare of the sun –turned from the glacial face to Reslo for just a second. Cynder hopped back on all fours and backed away from the wall, her tail whipping. "Have you both concluded your little _spat?_"

"There was no spat, Mistress." Darkshade cut Reslo off the moment she opened her snout. He met her violet gaze for a second before lowering his eyes back to the floor.

"Excellent. Now stand aside."

The Night Dragons had no intention of getting any closer with or without the demolition. They watched as Cynder's buxom form swept off its heels and spun in the air. Her tailblade glinted for a millisecond before it connected with the ice, its trail marked by tiny green contrails revealing Cynder's choice of elemental augmentation.

**_Crash~! _**–the ice wall exploded, sending shards everywhere in a staccato hailstorm. Two massive chunks rolled into a deeper, snow-cuffed expanse ahead. Cynder huffed and poked her nose through the new gap as soon as the dust cleared.

"Is that it? Is that the way out?" Reslo impatiently hobbled over. "Mistress?"

"_Mistress?_" Darkshade mumbled.

"It is another tunnel." Cynder sounded morose, but a quick sigh cleared her tone. "I think I see light down to the west, and the ground here is dusted with snow. We must be close."

"Thank the Volcano." Darkshade grumbled. "You go first, Reslo, I might have to squeeze."

"You being a big, stupid lummox renders that unsurprising." Reslo growled, her pink tail looping into the tunnel in chase of Cynder.

Five hours.

They'd been wandering the glacial caves for that long.

This had all begun with an aerial patrol over the mountains, one that had gone poorly. Cynder and her bodyguard of Night Dragons had been ambushed by a Wing of Warfangian Dragons, those who remained loyal to the forces of order in the North.

Taken by complete surprise, Cynder had been shot down by an overeager soldier, and she had crashed through an ice shelf. Reslo had come through a second later, cast violently from the sky after foolishly attempting to grapple with a Warfangian officer. The Captain had hooked a serrated Morningstar-blade on his tail into Reslo's shoulder and had dragged the weapon down to her elbow. The _coup de gra _had come from him mule-kicking her from the air.

Darkshade had been the one who fled through the cracked breaches they'd made. The subsequent cave-in had sealed them in the icy catacombs thereafter, and the Warfangian flight had retreated, not willing to ensure the Cloud Ripper's death by digging through thousands of pounds of ice and stone.

Now, Cynder was the only one able to take charge. She'd been prowling for their escape until her paws had chafed.

_If only a cadre of Apes were with me, I could use them to find a way out so much quicker, forgetting how many I'd leave down here once it was uncovered._

Cynder was more used to commanding hordes of her barbaric satellite armies: the tribes of the backward Apes, led by their four Chieftains, who time had transformed into her lieutenants.

Cynder had been allowed to spread a blanket of fear across the known world with her very own private army, becoming the most respected of the Dark One's generals within a period of two-and-a-half decades. That authority though was easily won over with drooling monkeys and the legions of Grublins and Orcs hailing from the Continent.

The Night Dragons were an entirely different animal.

Individually, the dragons native to the Dark Continent were terrified of her. There was no such thing as a drake or hen with the guts or stupidity to question the Terror of the Skies, lest Cynder disembowel them and leave their corpses speared on pikes across her Gothic castle in Concurrent, to serve as an example of the prideful stranglehold she maintained.

But overall, she knew of the whispers and envious mutterings that took up so many evenings for their kind. The Night Dragons had once called her a _half-breed,_ and now could only continue to do so in private. But they still did it. Cynder knew many of her Mistress' higher officers there were hateful of taking orders from her. Even to the monsters, Cynder was an abomination.

"Mistress, Reslo's not doing well." Darkshade called the moment he squeezed through the tunnel. He had always proven apt at latching onto things and never letting go, at least according to Reslo. Cynder had barely known him for a day up until this point, and couldn't say otherwise. "You must use your magic on her again!"

"The only thing I _must_ do is find a way out of this accursed mountain range." Cynder nonchalantly quipped over her shoulder, her eyes darting around for anything out of the ordinary.

_Snow, snow, rocks, ice… More snow._

_God damn it._

"Reslo will persevere, she has survived a great deal of bloody battles, each worth their own tomes. Our problem at the moment is much more complicated." Cynder stopped in a clearing dappled with ghostly snow wisps. The source of the light she had seen was above. Looking up hopefully, her eagerness dropped like a rock in her gut when she saw what it was up there.

_Of course._

It was just a crack between two massive plates of frosted blackstone. The light was bouncing off all the snow, causing the whole tunnel to minutely glow.

Their exit wasn't here.

"That is just _beautiful._" Cynder sweetly hummed. "Anything to prolong my isolation down here with the two of you I see."

"We're never breaking through that." Reslo growled, her eel-like tail undulating weakly behind her. "That stone's easily fifty tail-lengths thick. The capillaries diverge into all different directions… we can still find a way out."

"That's optimistic of you." Cynder muttered, already searching for another path.

"The day is ending." Darkshade nodded his snout at the little crack above. The tiny sliver of sky up there- though grayed by the mountain clouds –was turning darker. "These caves are going to drown in shadow in a few minutes."

"_Beautiful._" Cynder growled quietly.

"You say that like it's actually a threat." Reslo grit her fangs, a shivering whine etching out of her throat as the wound on her arm pulsed. "_Mountain of Malefora, it hurts~!_"

"Mistress." Darkshade gave her that goat-face again. "Please."

Cynder stopped her pointless examinations, slowly glaring at Darkshade with a visage of disgust. A Night Dragon showing such weakness was as unkempt as it was disconcerting. She had served long enough in the Dark Army as its lordess to know the difference between tactical assets and becoming conservative. The latter had no place with them and it never would.

"Step back from her."

Darkshade obeyed, his meaty paws thumping quietly off to the flank. Reslo shivered, her deep pink color slowly draining from her body along with her blood.

Cynder drew closer- a gunmetal and crimson beauty in the dark –and scanned the ragged wound sloughing down the dragoness' flank. Without the damage wrought to her flesh, Reslo was an athletically pleasing 'ness. She was built like wire, and her head resembled a sort of dactyl-sculpting, but her deep pink scales and black back thorns rendered her traits desirable, at least by Night Dragon standards.

"Why are you here, I wonder." Cynder murmured. "You have all the right cards, Reslo. You could've mothered a clutch and stayed out of the military advance during the fertility seasons. Your passion, and how it drove it you to where you are? I shan't ever understand it. What say you?"

Behind them, Darkshade huffed and flexed his wings.

"_Mistress._" –It was all Reslo would utter. Cynder had known her for longer, as one of their mistress' many footsoldiers. Reslo would sooner die than beg, even to her for her own life.

"You deserved better." Cynder muttered, raising a paw and whispering a hushed cant. Tiny bands of red energy swam around her fingers and over Reslo's shoulder. The flesh stitched back together only minutely as the wound battled against its own sealing.

"…It's almost there." Darkshade watched. "So close!"

Cynder was shivering, and her face was scrunched in concentration. The fighting had drained her of Mana and she was already exhausted. The spell was a silk thread that risked being broken by many iron needles.

The black dragoness gasped as the magic ran dry. Reslo moaned and staggered on her heels, trickles of blood dripping from her elbow.

"The bleeding stopped." Darkshade reported. "But the damage is still there, Mistress."

"You're lucky I got as far as I did." Cynder breathed, lumbering around and towards a natural arch of ice. "Our Mana will not return without rest. We shall roost here. This chamber is defensible and entry comes only from where we stand."

Cynder cast a cautious glare over the two Night Dragons back towards the way they had come.

The wind howling down the tunnels sung eerie notes in the coming silence. Cynder narrowed her eyes and snorted, her breath materializing in front of her snout as a phantasmal gust of steam.

"Procure nesting if you wish, but move quickly and be wary."

"I can walk myself over." Reslo shrugged Darkshade away and limped inside. "At least let me retain some shred of dignity."

* * *

[❄️]

Surely, the cold was one thing, but Cynder smelled something else on the wind.

She hadn't stopped staring at the archway leading back into the maze network since they'd arrived. Her snout was angled like a cat made aware of a mouse it couldn't see. Over the howl of the tundra breeze chilling all of them through their scales, she could detect a hint of something…

_Copper._

Cynder's eyes flickered to Reslo on the other side of the chamber. The deep pink dragoness had made crude nesting out of a ring of boulders. She was a shivering pile of loose limbs and wings on the ground, her eyes shut, but herself remaining fully awake. Dried blood coated her left forearm and flank, turning it into a shade of scabby red. Her normally beautiful violet eyes were dark, even under her lids.

Cynder had sealed the wound entirely over the course of several painfully draining episodes. Reslo hadn't said a word the whole time and had merely taken to sinking into a defeated heap.

There was nothing more to do. Besides, Cynder's mutations were far more effective at _killing_ people, not healing them. Her knowledge of healing paled to her knowledge of bloodshed. The idea of mercy-killing Reslo crossed her draconic mind a clawfull of times in the recent hours, if only to shorten her suffering.

Truthfully, Cynder respected Reslo, and Reslo had always respected her. It came from a mutual sort of recognition for each of their abilities. Other Night Dragons had taken to calling her the '_Poison Whip_' for her element was that of Poison, and her lithe body allowed her to quickly assault and beat down her foes in devastating hit-and-run attacks. On the plus side, Reslo was one of maybe a handful of dragons Cynder had exchanged words with outside of barked orders and battle cries. Watching her deteriorate strangely impacted the dark general.

Cynder snorted and examined her own talons to distract herself.

Weakness.

She'd sent legions of soldiers to die on a whim. Her mind was no more troubled for it. The real source of anger for her now was over how this little misadventure was going to steal away precious _time._

Time she could be using to plot their next move against the Dragon Realms. Time she could fill with hours of seething hate. Her castle would have been the perfect retreat right about now.

She was slipping into one of _those_ moods…

She tested the air again.

Copper. Cold.

But something else too…

"Mistress, might I seat myself?"

Cynder fluidly met Darkshade's gaze and held it. The brawny, black drake was standing just outside the ring of stones Cynder had appropriated for her temporary nesting. When she didn't answer him, and her white eyes impossibly glowed brighter, Darkshade took the unspoken message and backed away several pawsteps.

"I did not mean to offend." He swallowed, gaze avoiding hers. "I speak out of tone."

"You do." Cynder boredly agreed. Even sitting down, she was evenly his height. Her mutations rendered her the size of a dragoness of much older stature. She dwarfed almost every Night Dragon in the horde. "But given our circumstances, I hardly think the hierarchy of the Continent has much sway here at the moment. I'll humor you: but at a _distance._"

Darkshade nodded and stepped back further, plopping onto his thorned haunches and staring at her blankly.

He had only heard stories about the Terror of the Skies. He'd hardly believed what he had heard when he had been chosen as part of her entourage into the Northern Poles. Before that, life had been quiet in the dark caves of the Continent. His war record was weak. He'd only killed two dragons in his career of five years. Moles, of course, didn't count. But notwithstanding…

He didn't know why he was here even _before_ the attack.

"Mistress, might I ask something of you?" His voice cracked, and he growled at himself to clear it up.

"Your throat functions perfectly." Cynder daggered a brow. "Speak, footman. It would do us all well to break the quiet that is so natural to this place."

"Do you dislike quiet, Mistress?"

"I loathe it. What a poor way to start a conversation with me." Cynder rumbled, examining him briefly from head to tailtip. "But, to give you credit: many of your kin are terrified to even come near me, and yet here you sit."

"I've acquiesced to your company." He blinked. "ahem-_Mistress._"

"Don't be so naïve." Cynder leaned over some of the rocks, chilling his bones more than the cold ever could with a very evil, toothy smile. "No one will ever _get used to me._ Just as no one will ever have the right to touch me."

Darkshade nodded.

"Well? Your question." Cynder snapped, making him jump.

"I-Is it true that you have Northerner blood?" He asked. "Stories circulate constantly. I hear strange things. Drakes alike all but whisper them in the Continent's halls. I… I do not ask out of hope of judgment."

"No, certainly not, I'd have to kill you if you had _that_ in mind." Cynder chortled, folding her paws over each other and lounging. For a second, Darkshade's eyes followed the ample curve of her hip before he stealed himself and shut her out.

Cynder was regarded as one of the most beautiful dragonesses ever conceived. So many times he and his fellows had viewed her from a distance, or from the sidelines, devoid of any importance. To actually have her before him, engaging her in conversation? Such high change that was…

"My lineage is as unimportant and devoid of detail as all of this rock around us." She gestured with her tail. "It shares much with it. These stones grow old, they remain by themselves, only moved by time, and they are forever kissed by the chill touch of winter."

Darkshade listened to her intently.

"Nothing you seek to garner from me is within your right to know. _That_ I divulge free of any expected repayment." Cynder said.

"I would never press, Mistress."

"Surely you wouldn't. Harbor insult for it or not: but I believe my observations have proven you as a very predictable dragon."

"Mistress, my offense is irrelevant."

"Males… such _kiss-asses._" She snorted musingly. "I tease, footman. _Laugh_."

He flashed a brief muzzle-grin. He was absolutely incapable of reading her.

"…And your formalities are a quaint showing." She dipped her snout, wondering at him. "Why not take the opportunity you'll never have again? Engage the Terror of the Skies on an even-to-even base of conversation? What is it you're afraid of?"

"I respectfully decline." Darkshade swallowed again, dodging the last bit of that sentence. "You are the Mistress' right claw. It isn't in my blood to refer to you as anything but, my lady."

"So you're a conformer like I thought. How original. Perhaps I should start a conversation for you before we both die from the lack of intrigue." Cynder adjusted on the stones, exposing her ample thigh. Darkshade couldn't help but glance.

As he waited for her to continue, Cynder's eyes swept over the small cavern around them. The darkness was only flavored, not banished, by a little aqua tint from reflections bouncing off the walls of impenetrable ice meshing with the gray and black stone veins. The wind howling outside the arch was haunting, but fitting for the dreadful, and shaded silence.

"Did you know, footman, that even Ice Dragons have never colonized the northern peaks? That despite the cold, and the isolation to match their chilled demeanors, they have never attempted to set claw here?" Cynder said. "They don't do so because of the _altitude._ They're too proud to burrow beneath the tunnels and glaciers here, and plans had been drawn up millennia ago in preparation for a dragon city in the mountains. The Ices wanted to call it _Kar Tumm_."

"Why would the altitude be a problem, Mistress?" Darkshade asked. "We flew our route without difficulty. At least until the North-Scum showed."

"Kar Tumm was to be built on the highest peak of these mountains. The Ice Dragons would never have been able to have done it. The pressure of such extreme heights thins the oxygen levels. The Ice Dragons wh tried to map out the foundations nearly suffocated." Cynder continued. "Kar Tumm was a dream never recognized by the Realms' most pompous minority. Have you ever met an Ice Dragon? Their attitudes are seen as foul by many."

"What do you see them as, Mistress?"

"I think they're the smartest of the Northerners." She hummed. "Aside from their hubris that saw Kar Tumm abandoned to mere fantasy. After Stormwatch slipped into the ocean, the dragons all across the Realms were so haggard by the tragedy that external colonization was viewed almost as a road taken by pariahs."

"I have never heard of the Northerners planning such a city. Built into the mountain peak itself? Here?" Darkshade looked around. "The dark is the only proper trait here, Mistress."

"Guardian Cyrila would disagree." Said Cynder.

Darkshade inadvertently sneered. The Guardians of the Elements were viewed as the prime examples of heresy and evil by the Night Dragons. They four were a corruption of what true nature should have always been. That stigma had only swelled after Darkshade's kin had failed so many times to track the Guardians down and kill them. A particularly juicy prize would have been the Guardian of Flame, the famed _Ignitia._ The Dark One despised her more than any of the others, and the Night Dragons had been hunting her for years.

Cyrila, however, was the Guardian of Ice, and one of the more elusive of the four. Darkshade had never seen any of them, and could only go off of secondhand eyewitness accounts. Cyrila was said to be a curvaceous hen blanketed in aqua scales and purple belly plates. Her wings were supposedly- when fully opened –to be akin to staring into a blizzard. Again, all things he'd heard from others.

"If this Kar Tumm was planned as long ago as you say, my lady, Guardian Cyrila would have to be hundreds, no, _thousands_ of years old, which she is not." He countered.

"It wasn't her, it was her _grandfather._" Cynder clicked her tongue. "He was one of the planners for the city's conception. Everything I have read about Cyrila points to her deep-seated desire to restart such a project one age, done _rightly,_ she'd no doubt argue. Having faced her in combat several times, I can say her stoic, self-assured demeanor will always make herself her own worst enemy. She will never have the satisfaction of success in her life, not even when the day of her death comes."

"Have you faced all the Guardians in battle?"

"At one point or another." She plainly glanced at him, eyes briefly flicking over his powerful, black-scaled breast. "But they're weak. I've had better-sported run-ins with green-winged paramilitary hatchling drakes behind enemy lines. They're getting old, and frankly so am I. Who has time for these kinds of considerations anymore?"

"Were any of them like Reslo?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Darkshade craned his neck over and peered at the dark bundle on the other side of the chamber. "_sleek,_ I mean. Versatile and deftly fast. Someone who strikes like _lightning._"

Cynder closed her mouth and exhaled through her nose. Darkshade couldn't tell, but Cynder's advanced senses showed her the tiny, weak strip of violet emanating from the bottoms of Reslo's eyelids. The dragoness was listening to Darkshade aptly. Cynder glowered when she could feel Reslo's heartbeat fluctuate.

_Lightning._

Her first instinct was to name Volteera.

Cynder tapped her talons, her eyes drinking in Darkshade's body for a few more moments before she spoke.

"None."

"Oh." Darkshade blinked. Like wood, he was. A blank slate, goat-faced when curious. It was too bad the stupidest drake was also the more attractive. But really, where would that have gone? Cynder couldn't stand the thought of anyone touching her, even a potential suitor. Darkshade was nothing more than agitating eye-candy.

"_D-Darkshade…_" Reslo's voice quietly echoed across the room.

Darkshade's breathing hitched and he immediately trotted across the chamber, leaving his Mistress to watch with half-hearted interest behind.

* * *

[❄️]

Reslo hummed in discomfort when he sat in front of her rock-nest. Darkshade's cyan gaze danced over her needle-like limbs, locking on the dried bloodstains matting her pink flank.

"…I'm here, Reslo. What is it?" He heard himself speak.

"…_mmmmwhat-?_" Reslo's eyes shot open, and she cringed when she noticed how close the drake was sitting to her. "Darkshade, I thought I asked you to leave me be."

"But, you called me here-"

"I d-did no such thing." Reslo weakly muttered, her wings draping over her body like shivering blankets. Her chops were turning blue, and her face white. "Why do you have to torture me like this, Darkshade? I never wanted you to harass me. Why do you always do that?"

"I do not mean to." He quietly lowered his snout. "Are you cold?"

"_Pah._" Reslo laughed sourly, her fangs chattering as the wind howled outside the chamber. "…_You're such a blind moron._"

"There must be something I can do." He glanced around the room, looking back at Cynder, and frowning when he saw that her interest had turned back to the arch and not to them. Unbeknownst to him, Cynder's hearing was perked for them. "Reslo, I am not going to sit back and watch you rot."

"_Darkshade,_" Reslo sighed, scrunching her eyes shut as her head lolled onto the ground tiredly. "_when will you see that you will never have me again?_"

"I-" Darkshade swallowed a developing wash of thick mucus. "I am not speaking about that."

"…_No, you live it, every day, I see it in you, that g-glint? The one I used to know._" Reslo curled up on herself even tighter. "I feel empty."

"Reslo, I-"

"_Literally,_ I literally feel empty, drained, like I've lost weight." Reslo eyed her thin forepaw and chuckled. "I've lost so much blood, the frostbite-"

Darkshade's body came over her a second later. Reslo whined as the large drake straddled her back and dipped his wings over hers, himself shivering as he felt like he was embracing an icicle.

Reslo was colder than the glacier walls.

"-_Darkshade-!_"

"You need to be warm." He touched his snout to the back of her short-horned, black crown, his breath washing over her scales. "_Please, Reslo, let me help you._"

It screamed too much volume of a life she had desperately sought to forget.

Reslo mustered the last remnants of strength she had left, and with a shrieking roar, she hauled Darkshade off of her and sent him rolling over the side of the nesting rocks.

"_Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me again! I _hate_ you! Do you hear me? You worthless bag of shed-scales and rot-meat? I HATE YOU! And I wish you were dead!_"

Reslo shivered and slumped into the nest. Her face was buried under her forepaws, the howl of the wind muffling the pathetic sobs etching out from between her talons.

Darkshade trembled uncontrollably, staggering away from the nest like he'd been caught in the radius of a terrible explosion and was wandering aimlessly for safety. Wounded in his own way, the drake slouched against the cold wall, his ribs deflated, and then he didn't move, facing away from Reslo.

Cynder played with one of her wrist cuffs, her eyes darting between the two of them. After a moment of the wind howling, she sighed and sat up from her makeshift nesting, padding over to where Reslo stewed.

As she drew closer, she saw the dragoness' violet eyes flicker in her direction. Reslo twitched, and looked like she was about to scowl.

"At ease, Poison Whip, I'm not going to embrace you." Cynder muttered, sitting on the cold cave floor before the nesting to dote on the thin hen.

"_Mistress._" Reslo shivered, unable to even incline her snout.

"You've earned the right to drop formalities with me." Cynder softly uttered. "My magic: it… I've-"

"Y-You did all you could." Reslo smiled cheaply, though that was erased under the shivering return of a grimace. "S-So did Darkshade…"

Cynder glanced between the two of them again. She sniffed, being unable to mediate.

"Indeed." She said.

"…I tried to take your advice." Reslo said.

"What advice?"

"…H-Having a family at Darklight… d-doing something that took me off the frontlines, at least f-for a little while…"

"What happened, pray tell?"

Reslo's eyes flickered to Darkshade. Cynder's gaze narrowed, and then she snorted in surprise.

"_Tch._" She puffed. "Really?"

"It's an old kind of thing…" Reslo doted on the floor. "…Darkshade and I weren't meant for each other. I see that more than he is willing to."

"The female is always the more perceptive with these things." Cynder clicked her talons. "Tell me what happened."

"I-I never assumed we were this close, Mistress." Reslo painfully chuckled, her fangs chattering and cutting off her speech. "Either way, it's not important. Reliving _that_ isn't helping me now."

"You've stayed strong in worse."

"Q-Quoting Twilight?" Reslo smirked. "No… that was a better time." She looked up at Cynder. "I've been honored to fight beside you, Mistress."

Cynder grunted and shifted on her forepaws.

"Rest well." She whispered, before slipping away. Darkshade still hadn't moved.

With a minty sigh, the Terror of the Skies set her head down on the cold rocks, her internal mutations dueling and winning against the biting cold.

Her eyes never left the archway, as if they were seeking the visual trail of the _other_ trait of these caves that she smelled, the one besides Reslo's blood.

It was the scent of decay.

* * *

[❄️]


	2. Chapter 2 - Honorable

**Frostbite**

**2**

* * *

**Honorable**

* * *

_**{The Legend of Spyro the Movie: Soundtrack: Prelude to a Dream}**_

* * *

"Get out." Cynder's voice bounced around the spacious expanse. All the walls here were blackstone and plated metal. There were literally hundreds of empty hallways that allowed sound to travel through the whole complex. She could've whispered her demand to the pair of guards and they would have still heard her.

One of the white-furred Cold Legion Apes grunted, and the two sentries swiftly vanished through the Gothic-styled arch of the doorway. The doors themselves slammed shut soon after, and Cynder was left alone and to her own devices.

Sighing, the black dragoness slipped deeper past the rim of the tub, letting the water level rise to just below her jawline. The spicy scent of herbs rushed into her snout. She closed her eyes and lazily drifted a paw through the rose petals bobbing silently on the tinted water's surface. Nothing besides the quiet slap of the tub's interior and the din of her castle. Cynder spread her wings and nestled into the soft tile of the tub's bottom, trying to will herself to fall asleep.

Today had been a stressful one. News had reached her towers about Malefora's next plan of action. Her visions had foreseen a trove of great wealth to the South, across the Frontier Sea.

At first, it had been thought Infernia would have been chosen to pursue the matter. But Malefora had been insistent. _Cynder_ was her prime general and the jewel of the Dark Army. She trusted no one else to handle such a massive and unexpectedly swift, affair. There was a ruin down there to be used as a basing for the Apes of Chieftain Visigoth's tribe. Such a thing was unheard of: Visigoth's old bones had been nomadic since his fetid conception, of which Cynder knew little of thankfully. His tribe was always on the move, switching between the geyser fields, the northern shores by the ruins of Stormwatch or the far western willow forests surrounding the Pond of Shroud.

Cynder had not worked personally in the same headquarters as Visigoth for over two years. The last time had been when his Apes had converted a beached carrack on the shores of Daragon into a field HQ. Cynder remembered how displeased the Chieftain had looked. He always was locked in a perpetual sneer at whatever he was staring at, but back then that sneer had turned into a tortured grimace. Visigoth hated the ocean. Mostly because he hated his fellow Chieftains, particularly Jute and Saxony, who both had mastered travel over the water.

Cynder spread her body out in the warm water and stretched her tail, teasing the tip of its blade against the opposite side's lower wall.

She'd miss the pleasantries of her castle on this deployment. She had never been to the South before, but she had been told it was a _swamp._ The whole landmass. A gigantic bloody marsh. She wasn't exactly thrilled about the redeployment.

On top of that news, the ongoing campaign in Avalar had officially lost traction and simmered to nothingness. For a time, it looked like an imminently rising Grublin Fly named Patpag was reorganizing the thinly spread Dark Army forces in the Twilight Forests and the Valley. He had apparently been killed by a very accurate Cheetah ranger hiding in a tree, and the fringent command structure held by the wild Grublins that had been living there detached from the front for decades broke down _yet again._

The Cheetahs had stood rigidly against the wave coming at them, and had beaten it into a shredded, pathetic wilt of dead weed-limbs and discarded foliage. Were there still Grublins infesting the darkest corners of the woods? Certainly. Were they reproducing? Yes.

Could they do anything worth any degree of effectiveness for the coming months it would take their numbers to recover?

_No._

Malefora's scheme to corrupt Avalar had failed yet again. Cynder knew it would, but her Mistress had been inconsolable as she always was on the subject of that territory.

Cynder assumed Malefora wanted to destroy it so badly because of how beautiful it was. By legend, no other land in the world compared to the golden Valley of Avalar, once a prime spot of draconic lairs in ancient times, and still home to the Cheetah tribes and the stringently spread Wildling Dragons. Maybe it was jealousy or a desire to strike terror in the Realms. Cynder didn't know. She _did_ know the stress those failed, far-flung operations always caused. It wasn't the first time she'd been forced to pick up the pieces.

_But none of that mattered right now… this water was warm, the spices fragrant, the atmosphere quiet… she could drift… and finally…-_

**_Slam~! _**

The chamber doors (and Cynder's eyes) flew open.

The dragoness snarled as she twisted like a snake and stood in the massive tub, water splashing as rose petals clung to her shoulders and chest.

"The world better be ending, because if it happens to _not be,_ I am going to flay you alive." She spoke concretely.

The Cold Legionairre standing in the doorway didn't even flinch. A normal Ape would've fallen to his knees and begged. Cynder's private army of White Apes were made of tougher stuff. He curtly bowed, the black pauldrons covering his shoulders clinking with his motions.

"Mistress," His gruff voice echoed. "word from the Dark Continent."

"How the hell would you even know such a thing?" Cynder snapped.

"The Vision Pool below pulses with power." The Ape said. "The Dark One's whisperings are echoing down the halls. She is calling your name, my lady."

Cynder licked her fangs and lowered the threatening poise of her wings. She huffed, and stomped a foot in the bathwater, splashing the black and white tiled floor around the rim.

"I see." She shooed him. "_Fine,_ I see! Go away. Get out."

"Mistress." The Ape backed out of the chamber and the doors slammed shut again.

Cynder smiled angrily and plopped her haunches in the water, trying to drain the frustration from her body as she focused on the water for just a few minutes.

It had taken her nearly an _hour_ to set up this retreat.

She hadn't even sampled all her own damn fruits yet!

Growling, the dragoness extended a dripping claw and snatched the wine glass off the end table beside the tub, its top bundled and overflowing with a platter full of fresh fruits ranging from purple grape vines, peeled oranges and apple wedges.

Cynder drained the whole glass in one swig and slapped her tongue, trying to savor the heated departure down her throat.

_Shit._

She put the glass down and grabbed the whole bottle. She sipped it at the neck until she ran out of air, taking it back with a crisp gasp, her glistening breast pumping.

_The faster I get whatever it is done, the sooner I can return,_ she sloshed out and into the cold air, feeling herself shiver with displeasure. _I hope._

* * *

[❄️]

Why did it have to be _here?_

The falls constantly roaring in the backdrop made it impossible for Cynder to think, and on top of that: they reminded her of her relaxing evening that she'd been denied. Her mood was already sour, forgetting the additives of these.

_Shit._

Staring down from the ledge, Cynder watched the aqua waterfall tumble hundreds of feet below, where it ended its journey by misting and crashing over an array of smooth boulders capping its throat at the head of a triangular reservoir, rendered sapphire under the perfectly clear moonlight from the duo of planetoids taking up the midnight sky above.

The trees of Twilight looked like inky porcupines, shivering in the wind. They made a dark blue sea for as far as could be observed. Another nearby limestone formation was overgrown and looming to the east. Behind them was the very neck of the Northern Mountains. They were dark masters of everything behind her position. She was literally standing at the edge-fringe of Avalar proper. Twilight Falls was the landmark that was impossible to miss indicating that.

"Do you see something down there, Mistress?" Glower asked, his thin form appearing by her side as he peered at the falls below. "All that mist: it makes a good hiding place."

"You give their rangers too much credit." Cynder hissed, dueling with the staccato voice of the water. "Was it deceit or insolence that led me to believe your men had this mapped entirely out? Think about which I punish harsher before you answer."

"Mistress, I-" Glower tore his snake-like head back, his mouth hanging open. "…they moved."

"I know they moved, you imbecile." Cynder sighed in defeat, spinning around and moving to the center of the plateau. Three other Night Dragons besides Glower stood rigidly under the glade of a large oak tree encapsulating the rocky plateau. These were Naga, a one-eyed veteran drake who Cynder had worked with before, Poisus, a black dragoness who seldom spoke and had shuriken-shaped spikes running down her spine to her tail which was tipped with a bladed fin-fan, and Reslo, the lithe '_Poison Whip'_ dragoness who resembled a living skeleton and had piercing violet eyes.

"-doesn't it hurt?" Naga was saying to Reslo, the two of them idly chatting as Poisus silently watched, her expression hazy, eyes empty and staring through them.

"Pain is part of the cleansing process. If it didn't hurt, I would know something was unbalanced." Reslo was showing off her forepaw's wrist, where it was marked with tens of divets and sealed lacerations. Both of her front arms looked like that from the elbow to the wrist. Reslo always went through practices of ritualistic bloodletting between battles. "A warrior cannot take and not give back. Blood is too precious, even when it comes from the veins of the enemy. The animals around us have mastered this. The owl consumes a rat, it turns the rat into dung, that dung fertilizes the earth and helps the grass grow. A deer eats an apple off a tree, the expelled seeds give birth to the tree's children. Flesh for flesh. Blood for blood. It's uncultured to do anything else."

"Mmm." Naga harrumphed, his one silver eye wandering over Reslo's slashes. He flexed his wings and looked at her, his chops eternally locked in a scowl, even when he was feeling elation, but this time: _aloofness_. "Self-made temple?"

"What does that matter for?" Reslo took her arm back and huffed at him, her violet eyes daggering. "-_Forget it. _You asked and I humored."

"Mmm."

"Mistress, we're still waiting for Fanglo and Leaper." Reslo watched as Cynder stalked impatiently towards them. "I'm eager to head off myself, if it's worth anything."

"Pity, I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering lonesomely." Cynder rolled her eyes. "Keep your voices down. Have you all forgotten that the trees in Avalar have _ears?_"

"And arrows." Naga's prehensile tongue slithered through his fangs and licked over the scarred bulge where his left eye used to be. "Glower, move yet? Stay here not fit. Prey flees deep, soon we lose."

"Give the scouts the benefit of the doubt." Glower kept his distance by Cynder's flank, meeting eyes with the larger dragoness for a mere second before focusing on his Wing. "If they split up, it complicates matters. Our targets are priority number one, but most of all: stay out of the Mistress' way."

"It's an honor to be beside her, even if the glory isn't mine." Reslo gave a cocky grin, her violet eyes glowing the blue dark. "Shall we fashion a carpet for you, my Mistress, from the witch-cat's skin?"

Cynder rumbled in musing.

"Find enough of the corpse to piece together, and surprise me." She said.

"_I've found them!_" A royal blue and black-striped dragon, Leaper, flapped his pale wings wildly as he landed at the rear of the Wing. "They're cutting through the grove next to the tributary, the one that branches into the valley by Meadow Cave?"

"Damn it." Cynder chewed her tongue, her wings spreading under the sound of crinkling parchment. "Glower, start feeding into their path in pursuit. Where is Fanglo?"

"He was heading in the opposite direction." Leaper breathlessly pointed his tail blade.

Cynder animalistically snarled and leaped from the plateau, shooting dust in all the other dragons' faces.

"_Reslo and Poisus are coming with me! Glower, take the rear!_" She called, her roar echoing across the Twilight Forest as she zipped into the starry sky. "_I will _not_ let the witch-cat escape my grasp!_"

"Go." Reslo angled her snout when Naga paused. He, Glower and Leaper's wings kicked, and the three Night Dragons show like bullets through the blue tree canopy and into the heavens, blending with the evening hue. Reslo looked at Poisus, who was meeting her gaze silently, and with glass eyes. "Find their scent and lead us?" She asked.

Poisus' mandible quivered, the freakish dragoness leaning forwards and testing the air with a plaintive handful of rough snorts. The cry that left her throat was abysmal, like the shriek of an eagle whose throat had been cut and scarred. She shot off the plateau and Reslo came after her.

The two of them caught up to Cynder only because the Cloud Ripper was distracted. Her glorious wingspan blacked out entire fields of the stars, her white eyes scanning the trees below with malice.

Reslo kept her thin limbs tucked to her breast as she kept at Cynder's haunch. Her gaze flickered over the silver bands cuffing Cynder's ankles and wrists and her tail. The jewelry glistened silver, particularly from the bluer of the Eternal Moons. The only armor she had in comparison were a pair of silvery shoulder pauldrons and the leather harness across her narrow breast. Poisus had a dagger tailblade and a series of belts wrapped over her upper arms and tail length. Reslo realized that she was part of a strikeforce assembled for the effectiveness of its members' mental instabilities. She started to smile wickedly.

Cynder dived and daggered the joints of her wings as she descended. All crickets, katydids and owls became silent as a horrific, shrill scream echoed across the Twilight Forest. It was Cynder's wings. The trademark terror-tactic that had earned her the titles she had. She was the fastest flier who had ever lived. She was so fast that she broke the wind, like a bomb slicing through the stratosphere.

Poisus' shriek was pitiful in comparison, but it didn't stop her from trying. She and Reslo tucked their legs and went after the Cloud Ripper. Leaves and twigs hushed by them as they breached the canopy.

* * *

_**{The Legend of Spyro Dawn of the Dragon Soundtrack: Cheetah Village Attack}**_

* * *

Cynder was the first to bare any kind of brunt.

Her dive had been an accurate one. No sooner had she ripped through the tree limbs did she land in a thunderous _slam! _–upon the forest floor below, snapped twigs and ruined branches falling around her like hail.

A cloaked individual just a head shorter than her staggered back on digitigrade, pawed feet, an arm gracefully swinging over its shoulder to clench at the handle of a chiseled wood bow slung over its back.

Cynder sneered and raised her claw. She swatted the ranger like he was weightless, raking a trio of deep gashes through his vest and robe that misted pure heartsblood. The Cheetah was silent as he sailed twenty-five feet and crashed into the trunk of an old tree. He slid down the bark and crumpled among the roots, his ruined cape and cloak resembling him as a discarded textile.

Arrows flickered through the woods from all directions within seconds. Cynder roaring as she bent and twisted in awkward, painful angles. The rounds slipped so closely that she sometimes felt the feathery dusting of fletching on her scales. She snarled when an arrow struck her side and protruded, blood dribbling from the stalk poking out of her flesh.

"_They're in the trees!_" Cynder howled, opening her maw. A cone of flickering, crimson energy battered into the canopy of a tree, ripping leaves off its limbs and wrenching the trunk on its own rootball. A Cheetah fell screaming and tumbled to the ground in a quivering, howling mess. Poisus leapt on him like an eager dog and ripped his throat out with her teeth, still shrieking.

Reslo bounded across the forest floor like an elk, her unnaturally thin legs propelling her with the speed of a bullet. Her wings flapped and she landed on the stalk of a tree, scampering like a squirrel up to the nearest limb, she snarled and whipped her tailblade, hooking the ranger based up there by the thigh and dragging him out of his hiding place.

The Cheetah met the ground hard, hollering as blood pumped from his leg. Reslo made to straddle him and tear him open with her claws. The ranger slipped a knife from his robes and slashed her across the breast, before bringing the blade in a return arc that buried the steel to the hilt in her shoulderblade.

Reslo screamed as she grabbed his arm and twisted it, bone snapping as the Cheetah's shoulder and bicep remained upright for the sky, but his hand and wrist pointed vertically down beside them and towards the grass. She impaled him through the sternum with her tail blade, and tossed the twitching cadaver like a ragdoll into a ditch.

Ringing steel and dragon roars came from the south. Glower, Naga and Leaper merged into the fight, shadow fire bathing treetops as Cheetah rangers returned said fury with accurately launched arrows.

Leaper tried to mimic Reslo as he squirreled up a thick oak trunk. An arrow entered his long neck and punched out the opposite side, another ran his shoulder through, and another stuck rigidly from his pelvis. He collapsed down the tree choking on his own blood as he became a writhing pincushion that the rangers peppered the moment he stood still.

"_There-!" _Naga barked, his jaws bloodied as a Cheetah died under his forepaws. "_There is! There witch!_"

Cynder ripped her tailblade from a stomach and swung the corpse away, where it smacked off a tree in two separate pieces. She turned and snarled at a clearing between two of the oaks.

Striding forwards, unaffected by the forested terrain was a Cheetah clothed in long, ragged green robes. He held a staff with a ball of amber clenched in its gnarled head. White light streamed down his arms as he raised a paw and began to chant in an ancient runic language that even Cynder didn't understand.

Glower went to take off and attack the magic-user from above, but when he started to lift, he was roughly yanked back down to the grass. He hollered as animated, slithering vines materialized out of the forest grass and slowly ensnared his front and rear paws, pinning him to the ground. He opened his mouth and blasted a cone of black flames at the Cheetah in a last effort.

The magic-user put his staff out, and a bubble of white light materialized around his person, leaving Glower's Shadow fire to wash across its globe-like face harmlessly.

"Get the staff away from him!" Reslo hollered, ducking behind a thicket as arrows slipped over her head. "_Poisus, cover me!_"

Poisus' avian scream bounced around the woodlands as she bounded up a decaying log and vaulted into the trees overlooking Reslo's position. Poisus snatched a ranger from his perch and flew off with him dangling by his cape from her claws. Reslo didn't see where she took him.

Cynder had already moved forward. Magical words etched from her snout as she sprinted at the Cheetah sage. White balls of flame shot out and ricocheted off crimson spheres that orbited around Cynder like bloody wisps, they put themselves in front of his attacks as if they had minds of their own. When Cynder was close enough, a solid icicle of green acid shot from her mouth and whisked at the sage.

The Cheetah brought up his staff- his fangs exposed in a knowing cringe –the Poison bolt hit the haft and sent him spinning in the air off his paws. The bolt exploded and green mist trailed from his body as splotches of acid ate away at his fur.

Cynder pounced and caught the magic-user before he landed. She tumbled with him violently through the brush, coming to a dusty halt under the gaze of a tree. Reslo saw a ranger in a nearby thicket, an arrow prepared and aimed directly at the back of Cynder's head.

Reslo ran with all her might and threw herself into the air, her cry distracting the ranger long enough for her to cover the distance and bring him with her to the ground. She saw him, briefly, his feline features twisted in a hateful expression, his amber eyes blaring and locked on her as he struggled.

Reslo opened her mouth and bit him across the face, forcing her jaws together until something cracked and blood gushed over her tongue.

"_Heel, wicken-cat-!_" Cynder cried, ripping the sage off the ground and pinning him to a tree. He dropped his staff and quivered, the grass beneath him pattering wetly. "_Look at me as you die._"

The sage growled, Cynder's tailblade had run to the hilt through his gut. The wet slapping was from his entrails sloshing out around the breach. He gripped Cynder's wrist that was keeping him aloft, his hood blowing off his head as his ears wilted.

"Take a moment to smell Twilight's air." Cynder panted, covered in grime and sudor that left her body glistening. "Take that memory with you to wherever your people believe you'll go."

"…_n-never…_" The sage muttered. Cynder sneered and leaned closer.

"What say you, wicken, speak your last." She growled.

"…_y-you take life…_" The sage cringed, his cat-teeth bared as he died. His eyes were foggy with age, but they were bright with knowledge, Cynder was captivated as she watched the light flow from their beautiful, once amber holds. "…_you don't know what you take…_"

Cynder breathed heavily, her brow furrowing as she ignored her surroundings.

"I know life and death as well as anyone." She muttered.

The sage actually smiled.

"_…you… know only death. You have never… _lived."

Cynder shivered. She slid her tailblade out of him and let him crumple to the ground. The black dragoness felt her jaw quiver. She backed away from the body like it was going to explode, her eyes wide and terrified.

"_Mistress… are you alright?_" Glower was still tearing vines off of himself as he hobbled over. "The sage lies dead… finally."

"Witch dead?" Naga bounded out of the woods, silver eye locked on the corpse. "Witch dead… Mmm. Good. Very good."

Reslo lumbered over, nursing her stab wounds, her wings lowered like the ears of a pained rabbit.

"The glory is yours, Mistress." She cracked a grin, drawing Cynder's gaze from the body. "Are you well, my lady? You look… _uhm…_"

"What did he say to you, Mistress? When you had stabbed him?" Glower looked at the dead sage like a fascinated hatchling. The Cheetah was serenely, even disemboweled. His face was devoid of pain despite the gore. He looked almost natural, like the tree whose roots he was crumpled over. He had died protecting the woods his people had owned since the dawn times. His end was markedly poetic.

Cynder closed her mouth when she realized her jaw was flapping. She swallowed, darting her eyes between the Night Dragons.

"…He heaped curses on me, like any in his woeful position would do to their murderers." She muttered, preening her red wings as she turned and trotted away. "Where are the others?"

"Poisus will come back…" Reslo growled. "-when she's done with her meal."

"Mmm." Naga shook his head. "Freak."

"Leaper and Fanglo are dead." Glower huffed. "They got Fanglo before the battle started, I found him in a thicket with his throat opened and his wings slashed."

"And Leaper?" Cynder tiredly scanned the trees.

Glower looked at her for a second before answering.

"H-He, _ehm-_" He cleared his throat. "-shot to death."

"Indeed. The rest of the Cheetahs have fled. Our mission is complete and victorious." Cynder stated, staring out into the Twilight woods around them. "Glower and Naga will collect Poisus, wherever she might be out here. Reslo, I will heal your wounds. We leave as soon as we are collected. Leave the dead."

Glower lived up to his name to her as he tiredly extended his black wings and lifted up into the night. Naga grunted and went after him, leaving only Reslo and Cynder.

"Appreciations, Mistress." Reslo mumbled, Cynder lazily waving a paw in the air, red energy swirling as her flesh started to reseal. "It is an honor to serve."

"I'm sure it is." Cynder muttered, lowering her paw when the spell ran its course. "We have fought before, Reslo."

"In the past, Mistress." Reslo shyly bowed her needle-like head. "Three times, two of mutually shared bloodshed. Each has been more exhilarating than the last. You are… uninjured?"

"Why would _you _care?"

"Mistress?"

Cynder looked at her. "Nothing. Get ready to leave."

"Of course, my lady."

"Reslo."

"Yes, Mistress?"

"I appreciate you stopping that ranger from shooting me." Cynder looked over at her. "When were you planning on taking credit for such an act? Do you think I read minds?"

"…I-I am now unsure, Mistress." Reslo gave a crooked snout-grin. "The deed is better than the reward."

"…That's…" Cynder dropped her angry expression for just a blissful second, as she met Reslo's violet eyes, the roar of the Twilight Falls echoing overhead. "…_honorable._"

* * *

[❄️]


	3. Chapter 3 - Voices

**Frostbite**

**3**

* * *

**Voices**

* * *

"_Do you remember that night? Blood under moons. A Warrior could shed tears over how beautiful that whole exchange really was. She could see the irony, the complex working of fate to bring people together like that. People who spent their lives training and preparing to die over the course of maybe ten minutes in some woodland glade. Isn't that as horrible as it is beautiful?_" Reslo asked.

"It's…" Cynder curled in on herself in the nesting, her eyelids straining. "…_it's all I've known, and that sage knew it._"

Cynder's eyes shot open.

The icy cave chamber, the howl of the mountainous wind outside.

The silent huffs of a male voice sobbing.

"…_Reslo?_" Cynder asked aloud, tiredly turning over on the rocks and blinking sleep from her eyes. She saw Darkshade, he had his back turned to her, his black wings were slouched on either side of his body, and his tail curled across the ground behind him like a wilted root.

The drake's spined back hopped in tune with silent, muffled grunts. He was hanging over Reslo's nesting. Cynder couldn't see her past him.

Snorting, now fully awake, the Terror of the Skies slipped off the rocks and lithely crossed the chamber.

"Darkshade, Reslo," Cynder called over, drawing by Darkshade's side with impatience. "pick yourselves up, and be ready for a breakfast-less morning. We're searching the caves for another-"

Cynder's mouth stopped working mid-sentence. Darkshade had his snout buried in Reslo's ribs, right beside the bloody shoulder she'd had. Reslo herself looked… she looked like _stone._

The deep pink in her scales had turned to pale gray. Her face had aged overnight, and her eyes were softly closed. The dragoness' wings were vestigial, dead weights draped like wilted flower petals on the cave floor, and her tail was loosely laid over the rear brim of the nest.

Darkshade sobbed louder and rocked her back and forth slowly, like he was trying to lull an infant hatchling in a crib-nest to sleep. Reslo limply nudged with each push.

Cynder blinked idly and held a paw under Reslo's snout.

Nothing, no air.

Now she understood. The blood loss, the cold…

"Get up, footman." She said plainly. "If you value your own hide, work for it and do not end up like her. You must stand."

Truly, Cynder was intrigued to witness the first real emotion she'd seen on Darkshade's face, even if he was covering it up in Reslo's skinny body. The Night Drake was unreachable. He just kept rocking the cold corpse, and he would not stand.

"Get _up._" She hissed, bringing her tailblade around. "Or I'll skin you alive."

Darkshade howled and clenched the body tighter.

Clicking her tongue, Cynder gazed at the archway pensively. This complicated things. Darkshade had demonstrated some form of obvious attachment to Reslo, but up until now, she had never had any kind of direct confirmation besides her own suspicions.

Was it a true loss that Reslo was gone? Yes. But she had served honorably, and felled her fair share of foes. Her death was… _undeserved,_ and pitiful, but there had been nothing her or Darkshade could've done. Cynder could only reknit flesh and bone. She knew little else in the realm of healing, and that lack of knowledge had led to Reslo's demise.

Cynder was so used to death, that even the end of what she might dare say was a distant acquaintance did little to her. Her primary concern was getting out of the glacial caves. Without Reslo, and with Darkshade incapacitated, that made things extremely more difficult.

"She must have passed in the night." Cynder muttered, backing away, staring at Reslo's very still face. She paused suddenly, looking back at her sleeping spot.

….If Reslo had died in her sleep, then who had she been talking to?

Cynder tested the air again, blinking.

No more copper at least.

But decay.

She looked down at Reslo and Darkshade, snorting. She then looked back at the arch to the chamber.

Behind her, nothing. From the arch…

_Decay._

"We need to leave." She said. "If we persist in this chamber, whatever is down here with us will entrap and destroy us. Get up, or I am leaving without you."

Darkshade shivered, and his sobs went quiet. He started nuzzling his face into Reslo, like she was still alive, and merely asleep. Cynder felt her chest tighten before she quickly stomped the feeling to dust.

Who could be jealous of a body?

"_I can't leave her._" Darkshade whispered, snot and drool matting his snout and dripping. "_I _won't _leave her._"

"Whatever it is you believed the two of you had, it is now kaput, and baseless." Cynder growled. "Nothing you say or do will bring her back, and I know inside of you, your little Nightkin genes are screaming for the desperation to carry on. Your primal need for _survival_ is still in there, and you're allowing your emotions to cloud it. She's dead, Darkshade. Move on."

Darkshade gaped as more drool slithered out of his mouth. Now he was running circles with his paws over Reslo's cold shoulders. He probably hadn't even heard her.

Cynder scowled and swept around to start moving for the arch. The intersection from yesterday was still there obviously, still dusted with snow, gray morning sunbeams streaming in from the little slit in the ceiling above.

"She was sterile." Darkshade said behind her.

Cynder paused and looked inside the chamber over her wing.

Darkshade was on his haunches, no longer touching the body, just staring at it as reams of tears flowed down his black, scaly cheeks.

"I couldn't give her a clutch."

The Cloud Ripper watched for a moment, rolling her tongue around as she drank the information down like it was a bulge of grotesque slime.

"She couldn't give herself a clutch." She answered. "Any blame shifted unto you was unwarranted. I knew Reslo as a skilled combatant and loyal servant of the Dark Army. I knew her not for her personal life. Evidently, if what you say is true, then I was missing out on little." Cynder raised a brow. "Does _that_ help you detach at all so we can leave?"

"…How can you do this?" Darkshade looked at her. Cynder felt her scales bristle when she saw the shift in his facial features. Reslo's death had actually shifted his appearance right in front of her eyes. He looked… well, almost as dead as she was. "How can you just ignore this and walk away? S-She served you. _I _served you."

"_You still serve._" Cynder corrected with a hiss. "And by that right as your lordess, _I_ determine when it is fit for your life to be expended."

"You have no soul." Darkshade flat up told her, pointing a talon. "You died, and I am looking at the walking dead."

"_My wing twitches when wyrms annoy me. You're annoying me, Darkshade_." Reslo said.

….-

Darkshade leapt ten feet away, his cyan eyes glowing and wide, his jaw loose and hanging. He had reared on his hind legs and was sputtering in silence. Cynder was facing the inside of the chamber again in an instant, her wings preened, her blades bared. She tested the air.

_Decay._

Reslo's body was still the same as it had been, unmoved, cold, eyes closed and appearing to be at uneasy rest.

Cynder waited for something else to happen. When nothing did, she darted her gaze over to Darkshade, who had a fresh batch of tears rolling down his snout.

The drake started to pulse with silent heaves as he folded on the floor and covered himself with his wings. A strangled cry left him.

"I knew it." Cynder muttered, bustling across the chamber towards him. "It's well hidden, and it's so old that it blends with the stone harboring it, but I _still knew it._ I smelled it last night, I smell it now. It was foolish of me to think that resting was an option in such a place."

She kicked pebbles at Darkshade when she got close.

"Get up, damn you." She snapped, looking around quickly. "We aren't alone in these caves. Whatever it is, it has been here with us and we haven't even noticed this whole time."

"_B-But, Reslo-_" Darkshade sobbed. Cynder groaned and glanced at the arch. The smell was more powerful now, the smell of rot.

"_Leave her_." Cynder's voice echoed.

"-I-I can't…" Darkshade mewled.

"Get up now!" Cynder gripped him by the scruff of his scaly neck, and hauled the bulky drake across the floor towards the arch. "Ancestors cocks…"

She hadn't spoken that time.

In the flurry of motion, she was able to effectively remove Darkshade before he bogged her down further. She gave Reslo's cold body a final glance before she and the drake vanished around the bend, never to see her again.

* * *

[❄️]

Cynder led them down a capillary diverting off the intersection chamber. It was encrusted with ice all around, and it spiraled in a direction that appeared to be going deeper into the mountain. Cynder took it anyway. They had no other ways to go.

Every shadow in this place had suddenly been turned malicious, and even though Cynder's eyes could pierce darkness like it was day, she avoided them like environmental hazards.

Darkshade was silent the entire trek, his gaze was either locked on the way they had come or his own paws. His sobbing had ceased, and the only indication of his presence were the silent pads of his feet on the cold ground. Cynder led the way, twisting and turning, growing ever increasingly frustrated as time wore on.

"These caverns have to wind hundreds of miles throughout the whole mountain." She mumbled. "Any one of these ways could lead to a dead end."

These were probably air-pocket veins, created from glaciers moving in the frozen snowy valleys that had once been fjords dividing many of the cliffs. The ice being pushed against the immovable mountain flanks caused massive craculature formations to develop. These tunnels were no different than taking a hard candy, smashing it, and observing all the tiny crevices between the pieces in one's palm.

But one of them had to lead to a fissure they could fly out of.

"…What will happen to her?" Darkshade quietly asked.

_She'll freeze, become hard as stone, and will be an eternal landmark for any other inhabitants who may have the misfortune to pass through this network of tunnels._

Cynder grumbled, thinking the truth unproductive for what she needed him to do, which was to keep his head on at least somewhat.

"It does not matter." She muttered. "Keep watching our rear."

"Yes." Darkshade had been doing nothing _but,_ imagining Reslo's body back there, caught in a sort of shock, like he couldn't comprehend what was happening.

"…When you said you couldn't sire her hatchlings," Cynder started, earning Darkshade's attention. "she was infertile…"

"She blamed herself for it." Darkshade said so quietly that Cynder struggled to hear him. "We had been trying for over four months. One night, Reslo visited an herbalist, by Darklight, a-and…. and the herbalist ran tests… s-she…"

"She took out her frustrations out on you." Cynder turned around a jagged corner, minding a glittering array of sharp icicles jingling on the hallway roof over their horns with menace.

"R-Reslo stopped seeing me… she left our lair without telling me…" Darkshade shivered. "She pretended that I was not her mate, and she shunned me. It's been that way for the last year. Every time I tried, and tried… she'd just…"

"_Darkshade, don't leave me down here, please…_" –Reslo's voice echoed down the tunnel behind them.

Darkshade gasped and stood rigid, his eyes fixated on the way they had come.

"Reslo!" He cried.

"_No._" Cynder doubled back, hanging over his shoulder. "It is using _mimicry._ That isn't Reslo you're hearing. Whatever it is, it is trying to misdirect you."

"Reslo! I-I'm coming back! Hold on!"

"_No! Darkshade-!_" He twisted from her grip with a feral snarl, the drake wrenching between her powerful paws and scrabbling on the floor. "_Darkshade, it isn't Reslo!_"

"_Darkshade, please…. Help me-~!_" Reslo sobbed.

"I'm coming!" Darkshade screamed, bounding down the tunnel.

Cynder was quicker than him on the wing and by foot. She collided with him from behind, trying to grapple and wrestle the Night Dragon to the ground. Darkshade fought her like he never would have in his right mind. He paddled his rear paws against Cynder's belly plates, trying to hook his talons in her so he could tear her scaled flesh.

"Darkshade- it's magic! It isn't real-!" Cynder shouted. Darkshade spun onto his back and kicked her in the face, sending her reeling in a loop onto her haunches.

"_Reslo! I'm coming! I'm coming back for you!_" Darkshade scrabbled to his feet and sprinted down the cavity way, his black wings kicking.

Cynder shook off the pain invading her snout and stood, running after him with her tail swiping behind her.

"Darkshade!" She called. "Darkshade…."

Cynder screeched to a halt. She had backtracked to an intersection chamber. There were eight other capillary arches that each led to separate tunnels. Darkshade's voice became distant as his bellows rebounded through the ice.

Soon, Cynder could hear nothing but the howl of the winter draft breathing down the whole tunnel network. Heaving, she glanced at each archway, and moaned in torment when a brief flash of panic stabbed into her chest.

_Control._

_Breathe._

Cynder sneered and preened her wing blades. She looked around the arches one last time.

"_Damn it._"

-Then she ran back down the tunnel, and didn't look back.

* * *

[❄️]

"_Mistress…! I found Reslo…! She's alive!_"

-It had started using Darkshade's voice after about the second hour. Cynder had mostly been able to tune it out as she wandered the glacial caves.

"_Mistress, me and Reslo are here! We found a way out! It's here! Come to us, my lady…!_"

"You aren't either of those Nightkin." Cynder mumbled, pausing at the foot of a rocky, snow-capped plateau. The antechamber surrounding her was the size of a castle. Strange arboreal light reflected off the colossal stalactites made of ice hanging from the dark ceiling above. The chamber was cut in half by a bottomless, black crag. Cynder flexed her wings and glided to the other plateau across the drop without effort.

Cynder folded her wings and glanced back the way she had come. The tunnel entrance seemed darker than it had been before, on the other side of the crag.

"_Why are you running?_" Echoed a voice she didn't recognize. It came out of the arch and rang around the whole cavity.

Cynder sneered and examined her side of the crag.

A ramped tunnel, leading upwards over there.

She started walking.

"…_Cynder~…_" Sang a light, female voice. "…._Please come back. You don't understand._"

Cynder growled and passed through the ice-crusted arch. She had to dig her talons into the ramp to keep from slipping back down. She peered past her tail halfway up, white eyes daggering as she searched for anything moving in the darkness.

She would've been less intimidated if she had actually seen something. Instead, the female voice from before rang out softly from the direction she was headed.

"_You bitch._" It snapped. Cynder yipped and lost her grip on the surface. She created white, dusty skids as she slid down a few feet, before her talons hooked and she jolted to a stop, panting, her limbs spread out like a frightened cat's. "_You've been feeling me since you came here…_"

The voice had turned male, again, one she did not recognize.

She gnashed her fangs and clawed her way to the top with difficulty, finally surmounting the ramp and crawling up on a rocky platform at the summit.

"_Much changes outside this pyramid. It is a cell. You only get echoes of what happens beyond._"

"You shall receive _nothing_ from me." Cynder whispered, gliding down to a lower steppe below. This chamber was ridged with multiple levels, eventually blooming at the very bottom in a snow-covered trench that burrowed through a massive, reflective, aqua wall of ice overtaking the north.

"_Do you know how deep these tunnels run?_"

Cynder growled, reaching the bottom, and starting down the trench, her pads squeaking against the cold ice.

"_They run **Red.**_"

Cynder paused when the voice barked, its last word rebounding down the whole trench. The dragoness ground her teeth. She could hear herself, the light crunching, whispering in the air for how silent it had become.

"I know of someone who runs _red._" She said aloud. "Books, little parts so many overlook… mention something about… _it._"

The voice did not come back.

"_Hmmph._" She snorted, and kept walking. "_Fuck you too._"

* * *

[❄️]


	4. Chapter 4 - Source

**Frostbite**

**4**

* * *

**Source**

* * *

"_You have a recurring dream. I like it. It's… fitting for you._"

"It's a paradox for all I know."

"_It isn't so complex. Dragons dream lots of things. Their fangs falling out, their tails raising in front of family members, their scales shedding, maybe even falling from the sky._"

"That all happens because of deep-seated mental programming. It's the mind's response to unconformities and discomforts. There's a process of rationalization that manifests those negatives into visually understandable phenomena. It's all inside the head."

"_You don't think any of it comes from _outside?"

"No."

"_That's very close-minded for someone so educated, so well-read… I think… I smell the art of literature inside you. You're a writer._"

"No, I just _want_ to be…"

"_So as a writer, you know about existential crisis and outstanding circumstances…_"

"Yes."

"_You believe in dreams._"

"Yes."

"_Do you believe in ghosts?_"

Cynder's eyes opened.

She was met with cold stone and ice.

Peeling herself off the floor, the dragoness coughed as her throat flared. She drank from the runoff of an ice wall and nursed a developing pit in her stomach.

She was approaching day number two inside the cavities. She was hydrated, but within two weeks the hunger would kill her. Her mutations would be able to stave off its effects for slightly longer than a normal dragon could resist. But she doubted anything survived in these cavities that was large enough for a food source, or even _edible._

Cynder tried to pretend that the ice-runoff she lapped at was her favorite red wine that she kept in her castle. Recipes like that came from Darklight, the Night Dragon city on the Dark Continent. It was the only concoction of its nature she would drink in times of relaxation, and its memory did at least a _little_ to keep her going.

But it wasn't the thirst or the hunger that was truly getting to her.

It was the need for _sleep._

It had figured out that she wasn't going to be so easily manipulated. Calls in the voices of those she had been familiar with did not lure her or sway her from the straight-line path she'd been following. She was following the trail of crisp fresh air. There was a breach in the glacier somewhere, and she was onto it.

The _thing_ understood that too.

So, it waited during the day. When Cynder staved off sleep for too long, and she inevitably passed out from exhaustion,_ that_ was when it struck.

"_You have so much blood on your claws._"

"What does that matter?"

"_You are possibly more damned than anyone before you…_"

"Hardly. Picking up a book now and then might educate you on such. Even my Mistress, plunging the world into war, could not be comparable to some of the ugliest of us who have lived."

* * *

_**{Scratches OST: 04 What you Waited For}**_

* * *

"_You're alone._"

"Maybe, but why does that matter?"

"_You're alone._"

"….So what?"

"_You're alone._"

"Shut up."

"_You've always been alone._"

"Shut _up._"

"_You were alone from the egg._"

"**_Shut up!_**"

**_Crashh~!_**

-The boulder flew apart in a blast of dust and debris. Cynder, panting, let the Shadow energy bleed through her fangs as she snarled at the slumped wreckage.

The dragoness was shivering as she limped away from the debris. Frost was dusted across the darker portions of her scales. Her breath was always a white mist in front of her snout, and her body was wracked with feverish pain.

Walking was becoming harder as her muscles began to eat themselves. She did not know how long it had been. Everything was dark, and the only thing that kept her in the right direction was the crisp smell of exterior air. She knew the breach was there. She just needed to _reach it._

"**_Mistress_**_._"

Cynder staggered to a halt, leaning on one of the chamber ice-walls for support, uncaring for the stinging cold that ate through her skin on contact.

She lazily cast her long neck over, looking at a tunnelway nearby where the voice had echoed out from. Cynder shivered, a hungry exhale wheezing through her fangs as mist pooled in her face.

She tasted dirt. It was from drinking ice-runoff for days. The taste had become normal by this point, and she did not recoil from it any longer. She couldn't remember the taste of her wine to make things better, and so eventually the dragoness had been numbed to it.

"**_Mistress…~_**" –Moaned the throaty voice again. Cynder quivered, her pale eyes hatefully widened at the arch. Something began to creep into her breast. It was sharp, and cold like the ice…. It was…

"_No._" She whispered. "I _am the Queen of Fear. You cannot frighten me, you worthless, lost little thing…_"

"**_MISTRESS._**" –Screamed the voice. Something heavy and wet began to slap on the rocks and ice down the tunnel. Cynder froze.

The only things she had heard this whole time was the voice, the howling draft wind, and the occasional, forlorn crack rattling throughout the tunnels as the ice settled.

But _this… _

This was organic.

**_Slapslapblatplatmapl…_**

-The sound of a waterlogged corpse being thrown down a flight of stairs. It was getting louder. It was coming from down the tunnel.

Cynder began to quake as she did what she had always done when the thing started to harass her from a certain direction. She stared into the dark, and tried to pick out something, anything.

It always turned out to be nothing but noise.

"**_Mistress…._**" –The voice burbled, and the slapping and thudding reached a crescendo. "…**_why did you abandon me, Mistress?_**"

"…R-Reslo…?" Cynder whispered.

Something in the darkness moved. An amorphous mass tumbled around a corner, shifting and swimming in the shadows, glistening, pale flesh bouncing off all the rocks and the ice. It started to crawl towards her inside the arch.

Cynder screamed.

Her muscles regained their strength through the power of adrenaline. She sprinted down the nearest tunnel, bouncing over rocks, slipping between stalagmites…

Her foot caught on a crack in the floor. Cynder cried out as she painfully tumbled through the sharp stone and patches of frost. She ended her roll in a thunderous slam against the side of a boulder.

Weakened, dehydrated, hungry and tortured, Cynder would admit that it was not the first time she had curled up in a dark place and wished to die.

_Make it stop,_ she begged in her mind.

"**_NO._**" –The voice told her.

**_Slapslapblatplatmapl…_**

It had followed her.

Cynder felt tears running down her cheeks as she scrambled against the boulder, curling her once unmarred and beautiful wings over herself. She saw the amorphous shape lumbering in the darkness towards her, from the way she had come.

The smell of decay was strong now. The wet slaps only ceased when the shape gained height, and Cynder could pick out actual footsteps, clumsy, disorganized and heavy ones albeit.

The black dragoness felt her heart leap into her throat when the thing revealed itself in the dull aqua light of the chamber cavity.

She was reared on her hind legs, flesh pale as snow, glistening with unnatural sudor, limbs hanging like they were boneless sleaves of flesh draped over her slouching torso. Her eyes were gray and lacking pupils, her jaw hanging and trailing morose drool as her head hung uselessly over and behind her right shoulder.

"**_Mistress Cynder…._**" Reslo's voice wheezed in agony through the walking corpse's throat. "**_…why did you leave me?_**"

Cynder bit down on her tongue, and pressed her wings into the boulder behind her. A tremor wracked her body as the corpse stumbled towards her, limp forepaws extended outwards, dead tail trailing on the rocks behind it.

_By all the Ancestors, this madness…_

_Cynder._

The dragoness whined and wiped at her cheeks, trying to focus even as the wet footfalls got closer and closer.

_Remember your own title._

You_ are terror._

_You are not afraid._

_Control._

_Breathe._

"**_…Mistress…_**" Reslo heaved, her neck weakly craning as to barely lift her head, and turn it- sideways –in her former master's direction. Membranes creaked as the chops pulled back into a diseased parody of a smile, jolting with the mistimed steps of the dead legs. "**_I am here for you, Mistress. I will not leave you._**"

Cynder huffed, and her quivering ceased. She opened her eyes and snarled.

"_Abomination._" She hissed, her talons sliding out of their sheaths. "_Your magic is _weak."

Reslo's corpse wailed and its lumbering strides doubled in speed, its bloated mass slapping on the stone with wet reports as it closed their distance.

Cynder waited a moment, before twisting and bringing the business-end of her tailblade forwards in a devastating swipe. Reslo's body was scythed at the hip, and collapsed in two pieces with a dispelled wheeze of air and the crunch of decayed flesh.

A reverberating shriek echoed down the tunnels of the cavern and the howling draft tapered.

Cynder looked down at the reanimated remains in disgust. White, drained of color, now leaking green bile where there had once been blood. Reslo's deformed face stared back at her with her now colorless eyes, her cheek muscle twitching occasionally in disgusting reflexive gestures.

_She deserved better._

Cynder heaved and showered the corpse in Shadow fire. The whoosh was soon mediated by the consistent crackle of fat and tendons meeting their heated ends. The chamber flickered black, white and blue from the dark magic pulsating on the floor.

Cynder- rejuvenated by the display of rebellion against the thing –tested the air, sorting through the meandering trails of rot and singing draconic-flesh.

_Air._

The breach was very close.

She gave a lost, sorrowful glance at the cindering remains of her footwoman, and started to hobble down the nearest tunnel arch, her nose leading her down the turning trail of cold, fresh outdoor air.

_A way out._

"_Do you think I am just going to let you walk out?!_" The voice rattled down the tunnel, deep, masculine, toned with the power of boulders grinding together. "_You are _**mine.**"

"_Fuck you._" Cynder snarled.

She took another step forward, and the floor fell out from under her paw.

Earth began to crack and ice snapped. Cynder doggy-paddled in an attempt to gain traction. She panicked, her wings spreading but having little effect. She was too weak, too overwhelmed…

Cynder screamed as she tumbled through the trench developing in the floor of the tunnel. She was slammed between chunks of earth and pieces of ice, rolling, falling, descending into blackness, until…

The ground.

It was coming.

Cynder could do nothing. She closed her eyes and waited for the impact that would shatter every bone in her body.

Everything went dark.

* * *

[❄️]

…Cold wind whispering.

It had never stopped whispering, ever since the last rock had tumbled.

Feeling returned to her paw first, but even then, it was sluggish, and everything felt heavy.

Cynder opened her eyes, the nightmare neverending coming back to her. She was sprawled on the cave floor, surrounded by debris with dust stewing over her head all over the place. Darkness reigned here. The shadows were total, and…

…Ancestors, it smelled like _shit_ in here.

Snorting, Cynder quivered as she sat up and craned her neck painfully about. The antechamber was unremarkable. Lots of black stone, veins of snow, the pillar of slight illumination from the hole she'd made in the floor, or the ceiling, or whatever the hell it was overhead…

But then her eyes fell on the center of the chamber, and they widened.

Ice cracking muffled in the air. The iceberg was ten times her size, made luminous from the dull light shedding from above. It was diveted, beaten and imperfect. _Ancient,_ mottled with soil around its base as it remained half-buried in a pit of black earth and winding veins of snow.

Cynder's breath plumed as she observed the awesome object in silence. Her inner knowledge, and the things she had considered before came back to her.

The black dragoness shut her eyes, and wheezed as a tiny chuckle rocked her breast.

Someone _Red._

She had been right.

There was a skeleton inside the iceberg. It belonged to a dragon once.

* * *

_**{Legend of Spyro: The Movie: Soundtrack: Heaven's Tide}**_

* * *

"_Now you see._"

The voice made her flinch. Cynder slapped her chops in distaste and turned over in the wreckage, working herself up to stand on shivering limbs.

"_And now _I _see too._" The voice hissed. Cynder looked at the skeleton. The eyes of the skull, whose jaw was opened in an eternal scream, the sockets were glowing _crimson._ "_Terror of the Skies… I never thought I would see the day I wormed into a mind such as yours…_"

"_Why didn't you save me, Mistress?_" -Reslo's voice mocked.

"_Why did you let me die, Mistress?_" -Came Darkshade.

The voice cackled.

Cynder righted herself, and she snorted at the disassembled dragon skeleton centering the ice. It had shattered, but it remained in placement intact. The arms and legs had turned to splinters, but all the strips and pieces were orbiting in the same general vicinity for each limb. The skull was missing a horn, and the wing bones hung overhead like papyrus sheets shredded and cast into the wind with creamy sticks.

"_Yes._" The voice hushed. "_I _did_ die here._"

"I knew these tunnels were old." Cynder weakly said, her reptilian body shivering as the frostbite ate away at her.

"_These mountains are old. They are as old as the world. I have watched them, through this ice. No longer will it be so._"

"You….are…_powerless._" Cynder chuckled. "No Dracolich is worth its salt immobilized like you. You're nothing more than strips of cartilage left in the snow. And… _Red,_ you mentioned something earlier about these tunnels running with it…"

Cynder hobbled over the rocks, standing, hunched, before the giant block of ice and the Dracolich imprisoned inside.

"The _Red._" She smiled. "I read it. I read about _you._ Years ago…"

"_In revered annals, I think._"

"_At least you remembered something..._" -Reslo hummed.

"_You didn't remember everything._" -Darkshade said.

"_No,_ no… you… you've become forgotten. You're but a side-note someone scribbled in the Darkseep Tome on a whim." Cynder chuckled. "How does it go again?- '_The thing which is red as blood, and gibbers madness beneath the rocks…?'_ -something to that sort of tune…"

"_Good of you to understand your… _position." The Dracolich rumbled in her mind, its crimson eyes pulsating hatefully. The ice creaked, and steam began to leak off the crevices of the iceberg. "_I need a flesh and blood form to leave this fetid prison. A personal puppet, from which I can harbor and regrow. You are going to assist me in that._"

"…Aren't you afraid of my _Mistress?_" Cynder wavered on her paws. "What will Malefora the Dark One do when Frystdod, the Red Dracolich usurps the body of her favored general?"

"_Your mistress is young and naïve. I shall see her wage war on her elder, and we will both know how she fairs._" Frystdod's eyes pulsed, and something above Cynder's head whooshed. "_Kill her._"

Something crashed onto Cynder's back and drove her into the ground. She rolled with her attacker, snarling, kicking and slashing. She landed a hit across her assailant's ribs, roaring in satisfaction when warm life-fluids began to spray from the wounds.

Cynder's triumphant cries were silenced as she hacked and sputtered from the terrible smell that followed. Shocked, she realized that she was nose to nose with _Darkshade._

He was… _dead._

He was dead and attacking her.

Reanimated by the Dracolich's foul magic, Darkshade's corpse was a far cry from its original identity. His cyan eyes were now gray and hollow, his scales had sloughed off and had been replaced with sluggishly-slimed pale bloat-flesh. His wings were brown and torn, and green, toxic blood leaked from every orifice on him, including his mouth, which dumbly hinged ajar and blasted a shrieking wheeze in her face.

Cynder snarled and squirmed under his rotted grip. Her wing blades dashed his bloated chest to ruin in a series of precise blows. Her tailblade impaled her former soldier through the stomach, the tip bursting out the top of his feral pelvis with a spray of yellow mist and white mucus.

Frystdod's laughter echoed in her mind. Darkshade's corpse continued to hold her down, and his foul, decaying mouth lowered closer and closer to her face.

Cynder screamed and spit and hacked. She severed his leg at the knee and sent it spiraling away, she chopped his tail into three chunks will all wetly plopped into the dirt and leaked green bile. She opened his stomach like it was a sack filled with raw sewage, popped under brim-filling conditions.

Darkshade's corpse literally came apart as she sliced and punched and kicked. She opened her mouth, and a torrent of Shadow-fire washed over his sagging head. Darkshade's face sagged like molten metal under the attentions of the black fire, melting and dripping into nothingness as it was incinerated. Cynder- with a final roar –used her wings to send the dismembered cadaver away.

It flipped listlessly, burning, scythed to ribbons, and spattered across the rocks on the other side of the chamber.

"_You cannot escape from me!_" Frystdod's mangled voice hollered. The iceberg began to crack and shift. "_You will be **mine, Cloud Ripper.**_"

The light streaming onto the iceberg from above…

Cynder tested the air, and looked up.

There was a fissure. Daylight was streaming from outside of it. It was just behind Frystdod's prison. The Dracolich's supernatural bellow shook the entire chamber. The ceiling cracked, and rocks began to tumble from above. Cynder steadied herself, and scanned the chamber for options.

_There._

A stalactite! The biggest of the bunch. She'd need to be quick, before Frystdod could gather enough magic and attack her again.

"_I have sat waiting in this cell for five thousand years! I will not allow you to escape! You are mine! MINE!_" Frystdod wormed into her mind, psionically assaulting her with blinding visions of splitting flesh, snapping bones and screaming corpses.

Cynder barreled through the horror, white wind spiraling around her as she mustered the last of her energy into her Wind element.

She shot off the cavern floor and rocketed towards the ceiling, spiraling like corkscrew, her beautiful, crimson underside flipping past the black again and again. She resembled a cyclonic spout, shooting for the space over Frystdod's iceberg.

The Dracolich's entire skeleton was becoming wreathed in crimson energy. The iceberg was chipping and breaking. Soon, he would get out, and in his unrestricted form, he could subdue Cynder and take her body from her. He would be able to terrorize the living yet again after millennia.

However, his plans were for naught.

Cynder slammed into the basing of the stalactite, the massive rock-blade wavering as its foundation cracked open in a blast of dust. It teetered, back and forth, stone snapping and earth disconnecting.

Frystdod cried out a final sentence. Cynder never heard it. She sometimes later mused that it was something like- '_No!_' –or- '_I will not be denied!'_

-But in reality? Frystdod's echoing, mournful presence had moaned into the air only this:

"_Please._"

-Then, the stalactite fell, and crushed the iceberg in a fantastic ring of thunder. An explosion of dust and debris collapsed the whole chamber and showered Frystdod's prison in a grave he would never escape from.

Cynder's Cyclone kept her going. She smashed through the first layer of loose stone, through the ice, through snow…

Then the air started to whistle.

Resounding booms began to grow farther and farther away, behind her and looming. Slowly, her eyes opened as the Cyclone faded to nothingness. There was a sky. A clear, white-washed sky.

Cynder peered past her belly drunkenly, and watched as a mountain materialized in a never-ending road from behind her legs and tail. With the wind whipping in her face, she saw the mountain's top getting ever closer into the sky above her, and she smiled.

In freefall or not.

She had found it.

She had escaped.

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[❄️]


	5. Chapter 5 - Epilogue

**Frostbite**

**5**

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**Epilogue**

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_**{Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon Soundtrack: Big Valley}**_

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There was a nice current coming from the south. It had managed to pick up warm winds as it passed over the Valley and was filtered through the golden leaves of Twilight.

Even this far out on the side of a mountain, it still smelled like lilac, from the bushes that grew at the foot of Twilight's edges during the Spring, bordering the Northern Range.

Cynder kept her gaze locked on the faraway horizon. Before her were immense, endless and golden grasslands, the stretch of the forest, and the distant, white band of a river snaking through the countryside.

Avalar.

She had been so close to it all this time, and she had no idea until now.

Ironic.

Taking a minute to sit on her haunches, she idly toyed with magic around her paw, working the healing spell into her chest with slow swirls of her wrist on unconscious motions.

The flight from the edge of the mountainside had been fairly easy. Though weakened immensely, Cynder had had enough energy to at least get herself out of the deeper fjord-alleys of the range. She had hunted and killed a ram, feasting on its cooked meat in the later afternoon, and dipping herself in a river to rid her hide of the rotten detritus covering it. Cynder remembered that submerging herself in that river had felt better than any bath she had prepared in her castle. Evening was closing in now, leaving Avalar's skies to become a strange blend of deep golds, oranges and blues with stringent clouds.

Cynder was seated on a plateau ringing the hip of a low peak marking the border between the two regions. Birds chirped and the wind whispered softly. The Terror of the Skies enjoyed the warmth from the sun's glare overhead and closed her eyes, finding her center.

_Control._

_Breathe._

She supposed it was just another annal to add to the pile. Sometimes it got tiresome to think about. But exhaustion was _nothing_ after the last few days, it was… _irrelevant._

There was perspective to this kind of thing after a traumatic event. Cynder was content to mull and breathe on the grassy plateau, watch the sunset, watch the grasses turn in the wind and the trees gossip through their fluttering leaves.

_I wonder how they'll all react,_ she thought, suddenly smiling grimly. _When they find out I'm not dead._

Cynder's musing rumble silenced, and her eyes slowly opened to match her frown.

"_You have never lived._"

She at first wondered why _that_ memory out of so many had been the one to return to her in her sleep. But wondering was foolish. It was because of _Reslo,_ and Darkshade. They were the crux.

Cynder could name a hundred allies she had held that had died under her supervision, working alongside her, or in tandem with her. So few of them had any remembrance in the tired dragoness' mind. But something told her Reslo was one of those few. Even Darkshade, even though she had only known him a day.

That brief flicker into the lives of her own subordinates had impacted her. And- she hated to admit it –but those hours before the end had made her feel less alone than she had in years.

_Terror of the Skies._

A swallow flew out of one of the trees on the plateau behind her. It fluttered out on hopping paths down into the valley below. Cynder trailed it with her eyes, imagining herself as the creature, only she was not carefree and singing…

She was diving. Screaming.

_Screaming._

Like the time of frostbite that had almost killed her.

Her jaw quivering, Cynder rose to her feet and stretched her forelimbs in the evening sun, letting the rays warm her scales as she sunbathed like a happy lizard in the grass.

Times like these were all the same. She started them alone, and when the times ended and she needed to talk about it the most…

…This was all.

She had the air, herself, and the grass.

Though maybe, Cynder could try and will herself to become used to that isolation, but her heart put doubt in her soul about it. The caverns beneath the mountain, they… they made her shiver even now.

This new deployment Malefora was planning in the South… She was basing Cynder in the ancient ruins of the Forlorn Watch, a draconic tower built ages ago and abandoned to nature. Chieftain Visigoth and his Apes had been busy repurposing it in anticipation of her arrival.

All of this beauty, and the secrets it hid under its earthen flesh…

None of that would matter. War was coming again, it was in the air as much as the scent of lilac was. Avalar was beautiful. But like Reslo, like Darkshade, in order to ensure her own survival… these things were unified by the fact that they all were sacrificial lambs.

_If only the sky would fall, maybe then the world would end and I would be at peace. _

Haunted, Cynder extended her wingspan and took off into the evening sky without a word.

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**{📚}  
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**-0-**

**Fin**


End file.
